Blucher: A Family, a Legacy, and a Research Resource at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi

This publication explains concisely who the Corpus Christi, Texas Blucher family was, outlines some of its most important imprints on the city, highlights its mark on surveying, and speaks to the family’s broader donations to Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, including establishment of the Conrad Blucher Institute for Surveying and Science. It especially reveals the development of the massive body of research materials that bears their name and is housed within the Mary and Jeff Bell Library’s Special Collections & Archives. It narrates the story of the Blucher collection, its proper title being the Charles F.H. von Blucher Family Papers (Blucher Family Papers) and the series within those holdings called the Conrad Blucher Surveying Collection (CBSC). This work chronicles the entire collection’s growth, management, and use from the first paper donations by the family to the university in the 1980s until that institution made substantial portions of the CBSC accessible to researchers on the Internet. This monograph, with captioned illustrations, aims to foster further study of this important family. It also enhances continued use of these materials by the variety of audiences they address. By presenting an archival history of the massive Blucher Family Papers and the CBSC, it likewise will assist curators in doing their own work handling similar large family papers and/or surveying records.